Voters didn't buy those attack ads

Boy, must be tough being a Koch brother this year, a fellow editor commented Tuesday night as we followed the election returns. You have to wonder, he said, just how much money the Kochs, or anyone else for the that matter, might really have to spend to buy an election.

This is the year, if you'll recall, that was supposed to be decided by shadowy attack ads paid for by sinister piles of corporate cash. The Supreme Court, which took the nremarkable position in the Citizens United case that the First Amendment protects political advertising, was accused of destroying our democracy.

But at the end of Election Day, it seems like all those attack ads did little to change the outcome, all those millions of dollars notwithstanding. The presidential race, it seems to me, hinged on far more traditional political turning points during the campaign.

First there was Mitt Romney's infamous 47-percent comment, recorded at a fundraiser where he thought no one was listening. The recording seemed to cement the image of an entitled, elitist rich-boy candidate in ways all of Obama's attack ads could not.

That might have been the election right there, it seems to me, if not for the notorious first debate performance by President Obama. Suddenly, it was Romney who looked all presidential, while a surly Obama cast his eyes downward with the demeanor of a sulky child being upbraided by his parents. In a year of soft support and lukewarm commitment, it could have been the game changer.

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But then there was the final week of the campaign, when the images of electioneering candidates were replaced by pictures of the commander-in-chief on hand for the crisis of the hurricane. Those images of a government there to help seemed to stem the tide wrought by the first debate. Enough, anyway, to preserve the president's narrow re-election victory.

The pundits are currently dissecting the election, weighing the relative influence of the myriad factors that determine the outcome of any election. But those three I cite seem clearly to have made a difference. Whatever your political persuasion, you can see how those things seemed to make a difference with voters.

Unlike, perhaps, the final surge of attack ads here in Pennsylvania. Watching "Dancing with the Stars" the night before the election, I noticed every single commercial was a political attack ad, and most had Obama in their sights. But it didn't seem to change the outcome in Pennsylvania, where the cities, predictably, went for the president by wide margins while the midstate stuck with the GOP. No surprises, no matter how many ads the Koch brothers ran.

You may not agree with the election outcome, but it is gratifying to think it was based on voter perceptions and preferences rather than attack-ad brainwashing. And that's the trouble with the whole negative political advertising issue: They reduce a rational electorate to the level of a pack of dogs that can be set salivating by the ring of a bell, or their airing of a grainy television spot.

In fact, though, there's really scant evidence these ads work with any predictability. What research there is on the subject suggests attack ads work only if they resonate to voters' pre-existing predilections, reinforcing attitudes and opinions already there for other reasons.

About the best we can say is that some attack ads work some of the time on some people. Or at least some experts think so. And if anecdotal evidence is considered, there is even a good possibility negative ads can backfire on the side doing the attacking, giving the other side something to get worked up about.

That's a far cry from the "undue influence" critics of corporate advertising say it exerts on the electorate. Yet ever since the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission two years ago, those on the left have insisted there is no greater threat to democracy. In fact, Obama took the unusual step of blasting the decision in his 2010 State of the Union speech.

But a single presidential election later, it turns out the Democrats have had no trouble raising their own shadowy money, or making their own questionable advertising claims.

Constitutionally speaking, I think the court was correct in striking down state and federal laws that claimed corporate speech had "undue influence" on free and fair elections. Any law that silences speech because it might be too effective offends my plain reading of the First Amendment. And any law that invites censorship of speech because of its "undue influence" offends voters who, I believe, are able to make up their own minds on such matters.

Fact is, I don't think you can buy an election - if the voters themselves aren't buying the messages you have for sale.

One of the suggestions I've heard relative to my sporadic threats to drop the TV grids is to save space by getting rid of FlipSide, our weekly entertainment guide. Apparently, the idea of turning the guide over depending on what kind of activities you were looking for - "going out" or "fun for all" never really caught on in Hanover.

And our company has decided to eliminate FlipSide in The Evening Sun, moving weekend calendars and features on events inside the main newspaper instead. Since FlipSide wasn't the most popular feature in the paper, I'm hoping it won't be too sorely missed. And I'm hoping by integrating local entertainment news with the rest of the paper, we'll be able go more effectively reach more readers.

Nov. 15 will be the last edition of FlipSide in The Evening Sun, and we will be shifting entertainment news into the newspaper the following week. That week, we'll also be reconfiguring the Community Sun section in the Sunday paper to carry more reader-submitted content, including the return of full-color snapshots on the section cover.

Please let me know what you think of the changes, and, as always, what you'd like to see more of - and less of - in The Evening Sun.

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